Eurogroup: All Must be Finished Within the Week

The Eurogroup statement:

The institutions and the Greek Minister for Finance Euclid Tsakalotos briefed the Eurogroup on the way forward for implementing Greece's European Stability Mechanism (ESM) programme, which had been agreed last August. The Eurogroup also discussed the results of the comprehensive assessment of the four major Greek banks, carried out by the Single Supervisory Mechanism.

The Eurogroup called on the Greek authorities to finalise the financial sector measures, as well as the legislation agreed under the first set of milestones, in the course of the week. This would unlock the disbursement of €2 billion by the ESM and a transfer of the funds needed for the recapitalisation of the Greek banking sector. Up to €10 billion are earmarked for this purpose under the programme.

The €10 billion amount was previously released to an ESM segregated account, and can only be transferred to the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) once the agreed conditions are met. The Eurogroup mandated the Eurogroup Working Group (EWG) to evaluate the implementation of the above-mentioned measures no later than at the beginning of the week.

Greek FinMIn, E.Tsakalotos stated that “good news are expected in a week”.  “We are a bit under pressure because the recapitalization is going faster than we anticipated, and, in that sense we are the victims of our own success as the banks must be refunded earlier. This means that some issues which we would have been expected to solve later on are now coming forward and must be solved earlier”.

“We now have one week in which to close issues that were left behind on the first week of prior actions and we must also discuss some matters on the banking system. We must dea with the triad recapitalization-bank management-loans in the red.